State police find four at-risk children in San Antonio

Retired Texas Ranger Chief Henry “Hank” Whitman, seen in an undated courtesy photo, has hired in April as the new Department of Family and Protective Services commissioner.

Retired Texas Ranger Chief Henry “Hank” Whitman, seen in an...

AUSTIN — A special task force of state police dispatched to quickly locate 511 children identified as being at “the highest risk” for abuse or neglect located the first 26 Thursday as child protection caseworkers tracked down 134 more.

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The development came as Henry “Hank” Whitman Jr., commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services, requested a $1,000-a-month pay raise for front-line workers who have been quitting in droves because of low pay. The exodus has left the agency unable to carry out its core mission in many areas.

Officials said four of the highest-risk children on the list were found Thursday by Texas Department of Public Safety investigators in San Antonio, 10 in Houston and 12 in Dallas. Authorities said they could not release further details because of confidentiality laws covering the child protection program.

Of the others on the list, 86 were found to have already been seen by caseworkers.

Although all of the children on the high-priority list were supposed to have been seen within days of a report of abuse, some had not been seen for weeks, even months. State senators on Wednesday had demanded they be located and seen immediately.

Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the child protection agency, said no child was removed from his or her home. Officials said the hunt for the remaining 265 would continue today.

Before Thursday’s search, Region 8, an area that includes San Antonio, had 59 children categorized as highest risk — meaning Child Protective Services is required to send a caseworker within 24 hours — who had not been seen as of Oct. 17, a CPS spokeswoman said. Caseworkers had not visited 342 children who were at the next-lowest level of risk, who by state statute are supposed to be seen within 48 hours.

An even larger group of children was not seen in a timely manner in Region 8, the data show. Caseworkers failed to check on 197 “priority one” children and and 1,503 “priority two” children within the required time frames.

Whitman, in his revised action plan Thursday, asked Senate leaders to immediately find money for the pay increases and said he plans to implement a new program to train supervisors on Dec. 1. Low pay, oppressive supervision and poor management has been cited as among the leading causes of high employee turnover, in some areas as high as 40 percent.

Because so many employees are leaving the agency, caseworkers have fallen behind in investigating cases of abuse and neglect, even as the state has faced a shortage of housing for the increasing numbers of children being placed in foster care.

With starting salaries as low as $34,000 a year, the pay hike proposed by Whitman would raise that base pay to $46,000. Whitman earlier said a one-shot pay increase in the Midland area cut turnover significantly, and during a Senate hearing Wednesday he had said he would likely ask for higher pay scales.

His proposed salary hikes would add $8.2 million to a request for $53.3 million more to overhaul CPS, an amount that left some senators balking Wednesday. Finding those funds may be a challenge with a drop in state revenues expected to leave legislative leaders looking for perhaps as much as $4 billion more to make ends meet in the new two-year budget to be debated starting in January.

At a cost of about $57,000 to train each new caseworker, agency officials have estimated they are losing tens of millions of dollars to the high turnover rates. Echoing sentiments of other committee members, Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, said that was tanamount to “opening a window at the Capitol and throwing out” millions of dollars in cash.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Jane Nelson, a Flower Mound Republican who was among senators who demanded fast action Wednesday to curb the agency’s myriad problems, said: “I have also asked the agency for daily updates on their efforts to address this crisis.”

For the past decade, lawmakers have allocated more and more funding to repair chronic problems in foster care and child protection programs as caseloads mushroomed. From a budget of $1.2 billion in 2002, the agency’s current budget is $2.8 billion.

Whitman said that as soon as legislative leaders find funding for higher pay or more staff, he will begin implementing changes that are not funded in his current budget. Among other things, he has requested more than 800 additional employees — including more than 500 front-line case managers and investigators — to address the growing number of abuse and neglect cases.

As part of the additional hires, Whitman is seeking 200 additional investigative caseworkers and an additional 100 special investigators, along with more caseworkers to handle family-based safety services and conservatorships.